Happy New Year ©1990 by Ami Simms 54" x 38" I was the last one on the planet to learn how to use a rotary cutter. Honest. I much preferred the ease and accuracy of a ratty old piece of template cardboard and a dull chalk pencil. (I could never figure out why my quilts never slid together easily.) I think I finally managed to learn how to use one of those silly pizza cutters in the fall of 1989 when I thought it would be a good idea to thin out my stash. I chopped off a strip of fabric from each of the hand dyed fabrics I had dyed and put them together into this string quilt. (Didn’t make a dent!) The pattern came from an antique string quilt that had the circles in that wonderful cheddar yellow. That was before I washed the quilt and before most of the neighboring strings were permanently stained with what now looks like melted cheddar. (MORAL: If it ain’t dirty, don’t wash it!) I got the antique version at a furniture store. They didn’t know what they had and since I wasn’t about to tell them, I got it for a song. A very short, sweet, shamefully inexpensive song. My hand-dyed version hangs in our kitchen on a curved wall above the “bar.” We don’t drink. Since I gave up cooking several years ago, we don’t even eat there. There are matching stool covers with the leftovers that we don’t sit on either. Except for breakfast, which doesn’t count.